In 2007, Wetlands Watch estimated that Virginia would lose 50-80% of its tidal marshes by 2100 due to sea-level rise.

Eighteen years later, that wetlands loss range remains the same but will happen sooner with Virginia’s accelerated pace of relative sea-level rise.

There is academic sparring about the rate and extent of vegetated tidal wetlands losses but there is universal agreement that if we don’t start putting new policies in place — and spend a lot of money — the high side estimates will prevail. And given the extent of the work facing us, we’re almost out of time to start the work.

Why should anyone other than crabs, muskrats and duck hunters care about disappearing wetlands?

The list of wetlands values is long: most productive landscapes on Earth, base of our aquatic food chain, home to nearly all tidal finfish and shellfish (leading to the bumper sticker, “No Wetlands, No Seafood”), nursery and home to numerous bird species, storm-surge and flood protection, and pollution cleanup on our tidal waterways.

In short, Virginia’s tidal wetlands provide many millions of dollars’ worth of free services annually and all we have to do is let them live.

That is a growing challenge given the changes we are facing.

As wetlands trap sediment and pollutants, they build slowly vertically, keeping pace with gradual increases in sea level. When sea level accelerates, as it has in recent decades, they can’t keep up and must move “inland” with the moving shoreline, sending seeds and shoots into the newly created intertidal zone.

However, if this landward migration is blocked by a bulkhead or road or berm, the marsh will drown. Since most of our tidal shoreline is privately owned, and most people are not keen on seeing their yards or farms or woodlots turn into wetlands, we can expect many barriers to be built as the waters rise.

That understandable response is a death sentence for our tidal marshes and all they support and provide. We’ll end up spending many, many millions building water treatment plants and importing seafood from elsewhere to make up for the lost, free environmental services.

We know where the marshes are, where they are at risk, and where they will have to migrate to if we’re to keep benefitting from their unheralded work. What is needed is a strategy and money to make it happen.

At a fraction of the future cost of tidal wetlands loss, we can begin to purchase or conserve the “landing zones” for today’s marshes. We can allow people to stay where they are until the waters get too close to their property, a point at which personal safety and economic sense add to the need to get out of the wetlands’ way.

In the crowded landscapes of Hampton Roads, we can actually add sediment and sand to the wetlands to help them outpace rising waters, the same sediment and sand we clear out of our boat channels. That work is underway now in the Lynnhaven River, where near total wetlands loss will occur absent these efforts.

Virginia is developing a range of resilience, sea-level rise and flooding response plans to protect our critical infrastructure, but none of them focus on a strategy to sustain tidal marshes, the critical natural infrastructure along our shorelines.

However, Virginia has just established a statewide task force to find ways to protect Virginia’s wetlands and plan for their health and survival. “Survival” is a politically acceptable fig leaf that will allow this group to peer into the future and map out a path for marsh protection and make it part of Virginia’s broader resilience strategies.

Make no mistake, this is very complicated and expensive work, not undertaken on this scale before. Moving Virginia’s 95,000 acres of tidal wetlands uphill, onto tax-paying property and existing freshwater wetlands, will have tremendous economic and ecosystem costs.

Not trying will have even larger costs.

Skip Stiles is a senior advisor to Wetlands Watch, a statewide environmental organization based in Norfolk. Email him at skip.stiles@wetlandswatch.org.

https://www.dailypress.com/2025/10/11/column-virginia-must-act-to-save-endangered-coastal-wetlands/